


Viruses and Universities

by Evekle



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Characters writing essays, Everyone is tired, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Me trying to sickfic? Yeah, Sickfic, video game references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 10:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16911225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evekle/pseuds/Evekle
Summary: Thomas goes off to university and flu season rolls around and what happens afterwards during the semester. Typical sickfic in action. Written for the TMRSS18!





	Viruses and Universities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skyofstardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyofstardust/gifts).



> Oh boy I finally got this done. Had a lot of fun coming back to write things for the fandom which got me into writing. Tried going for fluff and whatnot.

Thomas thinks it was the railings fault that he’s in bed, coughing every few minutes. It was either that or it was the decision to not wear a coat when running between classes. Thing is, he’s sick. He can practically hear Newt’s voice in his head going: ‘I told you Tommy!’ Though he degresses, being sick meant one less lecture to go to which meant less homework to worry about. 

It’s five minutes before school starts. This was going to be a long day. 

\-------

He doesn’t really mind being stuck in bed, all he has to do is finish the homework from the mathematics class as soon as his head stops pounding. Thomas just really doesn’t want to get out of bed, there’s a lecture at ten. It’s around nine in the morning right now. Maybe it’s the running nose, maybe it’s the dawning realization that there’s an assignment due in three days, he finds himself flopping back on the bed. There’s a few hours, he’ll get up then. 

Ten o’clock crashes through the door, yet the blinding headache isn’t going away. Thomas resigns himself to just stay there and slowly die of boredom. May his shucking grades fall down slowly because of flu season. Slowly, he finds himself grabbing his phone, might as well make the most of it. 

\-------

Let’sbereckless: hey

I’mnotMean: Eyyyyyy tomster!  
What’s up? Where r u

Let’sbereckless: sick  
What’s the homework today

I’mnotMean: idk rat guy’s still talking about the mitochondria 

MamaNoot: aka the powerhouse of the cell  
Told you Tommy

Let’sbereckless: sorry mom  
Tell me homework after?? Pls

MamaNoot: idk should we?

Let’sbereckless: MOTHER NO PLZ ILL BE GOOD  
（πーπ）

It’s funny really, he’s just in his dorm, trying to stifle the laughter from the exchange. Part of him is even glad for ‘skipping’ one of Professor Janson’s lectures. The guy just reads off of the textbook anyways so why bother? 

I’mnotMean: no  
Jk jk 

MamaNoot: we’ll swing back there Tommy  
For a visit  
Two more hours 

Let’sbereckless: Thank u ⊂(・ヮ・⊂)  
Life saver 

MamaNoot: ;)

I’mnotMean: guys stop flirting 

Let’sbeReckless: we’re not!!!

MamaNoot: we’re dating Tommy 

Alright, fair point. Thomas turns off the phone, the headaches even worse than before. Maybe looking at the phone screen so early wasn’t good. He could choose to stay here or try to get some work done. The phone buzzes. 

I’mnotMean: we killed him 

MamaNoot: Oof whoops  
Tommy???  
R u alive??? 

Going against better judgement, he decides that maybe he should just use call for family instead of waiting here in pain. All reputation be damned, if he even has one. One response more then he can drop. 

Let’sbeReckless: alive  
Plz come asap  
Tired plz sos  
Thanks 

Thomas lies down back on the bed and he’s out within five seconds. Maybe it’ll stop the world from spinning. 

\-------

There’s faint noise of bell in the distance. As soon as it starts, it’s over with Minho’s voice seeming way too loud. How did he get in here? He has no idea nor the energy to deal with it. The next thing he knows, there’s chicken soup in front of him. It’s just confusing. 

“How’d you guys get in?” he finds himself asking between coughs. 

“Front door. Gave me a copy of the keys Tommy,” Newt replies. Right, right, that was a thing which occurred months ago. It’s too tiring to think.

\------

The chicken soup is good. It’s not to hot or too cold, pieces of chicken cut just the right size, the carrots as well. The soup’s like a warm blanket, and it warms Thomas to the ends of his toes. 

“It’s always about some biological units of living things, Tomster! And the smallest unit of life are chemical compounds containing Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon--” Minho rambles as he retells Thomas about the recent lecture in ‘Introduction to Biology’. 

“Ratman shucking sucks, like really sucks,” Newt adds on. “Remember Mr.Rosaline back in elementary? Yeah, probably the same bloody man.” 

Thing is, he’s only really good at the sciences. It’s his best bet to get a job. At least he has a week to do the homework before it’s due, an essay with a maximum word limit of five thousand words in the first two weeks of university. This place is Hell. 

\--------

The three of them spend the rest of the afternoon doing nothing productive, though Minho does eventually leave for track practice--which Thomas has chosen to skip after Newt gives him a lecture about how ‘it’s a bad idea’. Hey, at least he gets to spend the rest of the day with his friends. 

\------

The next morning rolls around, sun shining high in the sky when Thomas wakes it up again.  
“Morning Tommy.” Newt’s voice is suddenly right behind him. Thomas swears that he jumps five feet up from the couch. How did he get there anyways?  
“Morning?” 

They spend the next day trying to do some of their homework. Turns out having an essay assigned three weeks ago does not subtract from the pre-existing stress of actually writing the darn thing. He’s doing this while he has a cough. Someone run him over with a chainsaw.  
“King Lear, ugh. Shuck me.” he comments as he pulls out his laptop. It’s supposed to be a thousand words long, and seems like it takes forever. 

The, he writes as the first word, his brain going blank at the next moment. It takes a few moments to sink in that his headache is gone. Somehow. He floops back onto the floor. 

The two of them spend the rest of the day, taking naps every few hours--since sleeping cures colds somehow? And drinking gallons of water. Both he and Newt have two hundred words by the end of the day. It had taken them eight hours to write the words and even still, Thomas has no outline. No clear thesis. He’s gonna need to edit this sometime unless he wants Professor Paige to kill him--not that she isn’t already from ‘skipping classes’, it’s not university professors cared anyways right? 

Let’sbeReckless: Do you think professors care about me missing classes  
MamaNoot: Probably not  
I’mnotMean: Shuck homework  
MamaNoot: Min NO  
I’mnotMean: Min YES  
Let’sbeReckless: a;klfd;alj Shuck homework  
MamaNoot: Tommy NO

\-----

Thomas feels as though he's flying through the air. Simply just drifting upwards into the sky, everything's white all around. It's funny how weird sleeping is after getting sick. Occasionally he swears the room is spinning around, a dreidel rotating on an axis--just without the glamour which it the dreidel has. 

Spinning, everything's moving., 

Somehow he's managed to land himself a fever. Thomas blames the essay writing. It's definitely the essay writing, not the later bedtimes since Newt's been crashing over. 

\---------  
“Hey Newt, what's the opposite of fire?”  
“Go back to bed Tommy--”  
“But what is it? Is it water or is it not fire?”

\--------  
“ ‘Hamlet’s inability to choose can be seen within William Shakespeare's Hamlet.’ You don't say Newt?”  
“Bloody literature.”  
“I mean it works.”

\-------

He's spent a week in bed, or dorm to be more exact, just waiting for the damn fever to fade away. Thomas was keeping track of the days, despite how hard it was to keep track of one day to the next. After all, what was the difference between a Monday or Sunday when you're sleeping over eight hours a day? 

He's sick of drinking Chicken soup, look, it's fine and all that but after having it for over week, for almost every meal. He's just tired of it. So Newt switches over to vegetable soup. It's an improvement. 

After another week, he's back on his feet. Back to doing more mitosis analysis and essay writing. Back to university life with a cough. 

\--------

“You are all assigned a one thousand words essay, cause and effect. Deadline of one week from now.” 

Another essay. Another essay. Thomas swears that the professors of this university are insane. Everyone was freshman here, and it's only two months into the semester. Packing his supplies up, Thomas concludes that he'd rather be in a maze with no exit than to write another essay, perhaps he can make a DnD campaign out of it, who knows. Another thing into the agenda, and it's not the essay. 

\-----  
“Minho, there's a giant bug creature approaching you. What are you going to do?” Newt asks before he flips through the campaign book  
“Can I seduce it?”  
Thomas bursts out in laughter only to be cut off by coughs. It's been happening to every enemy encounter. Newt rolls his eyes.  
“Roll for initiative.”  
“Natural TWENTY!”  
“You've seduced to enemy. Brilliant job. Tommy, you?”  
“I'm gonna do the same.” Thomas swears Newt is trying to kill him with eyes alone. Being the dungeon master did mean one has to keep up with largest amount of ridiculousness from the players.  
“Roll for initiative then.”

Dungeons and Dragons was slowly becoming his favourite role playing game.

\----------

“The smallest living thing in life is a cell, made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen--”  
Listening to Professor Janson drone on about the beginnings of cell theory which everyone who has taken grade eleven biology should know. Thomas was one who sort of just slept through the class, it was cakewalk albeit boring. The next thing they were going to do was to go over Darwin’s Evolution assuming he has eyes aren’t blind. Thomas just wants to start on the new things, not going over high school material. Again. 

“We’re going to go through the Evolution sometime next week. It will be review and I do expect that you all know about what it is, if not, read the textbook or feel free to stop by during my office hours.”

There’s a few groans and a some people are laughing out of sarcastically with a tinge of hopelessness. Oh how university students managed their time. Getting through this class was going to be painful, and he still has a cough. 

\---------

Ratman has been biting everyone in the class out over their first assignment, since everyone in the class basically bombed the entire thing. On the bright side, at least everyone was passing the course. Sort of.  
“I expected that all of you would at least know how to make a chart at the very least. But we must be moving on.”

Everyone looks as though they were going to murder the professor, a girl raising up her hand. “Sir, I don’t think some of us understood what the assignment was about--”

But the Ratman has already left the room, leaving only the chattering of the students behind. 

\---------

Thomas has managed to destroy his sleep schedule. How? He has no idea. Thing is, he hasn’t started on the essays which have a deadline which is looming closer and closer by the passing day. Word count total that’s demanded: over five thousand words. What he has at the moment: slightly over five hundred words. One thousand words must be done by next week and the others must be done within a month’s time. There’s also a pre-lab, why Ratman assigned one? Thomas does not want to know. All he knows is that they were going to bisect a cow’s eye. 

Let’sbeReckless: yo min  
Start on the prelab yet?

I’mnotMean: nope 

Let’sbeReckless: me too  
*High five!*  
I’mnotMean: *high five*

He goes back to writing the second essay. At least it’s cause and effect, easy enough. It’s ten o’clock when he gets started on writing the darn thing. All he needs to do is to word vomit and hope for the best. Thomas finds himself opening up the group chat beside his document. No one’s talked to each other, well not in the chat anyways. Perhaps exams were coming up for some, hence the silence of the chat with an occasional meme or someone complaining about a project. 

Analyzing stories was painful for Thomas. Seeing how the author could be saying that the curtains were blue which gets over interpreted by the teachers. He’s pretty sure he’s watched something about over analyzing movies over the summer, for fun. He was curious. 

Why was the turtle a symbol in the book ‘Grapes of Wrath’? Thomas could care less. 

\---------

Before he knows it, exam season is rolling around in the corner. A week filled only with exams, nothing else. Meaning everyone will be getting less than eight hours of sleep again. He’s heard that every year, there’s always some students who cram to try and survive for missing out on classes. It’ll be fine, he tells himself. 

He’s never been more wrong. 

The students all around him are living off of sugar and nothing else. He’s been spending time in the library whenever possible, spending less time with Newt and the others for the sake of stuffing in a few more studying hours in the library. The last thing they needed was to fail within the first year--except there’s always a few that do. 

“Y’know man, you are probably overreacting.” Alby comments one day as they pour over the biology textbook.  
“Tell me about it. We’re all shucking tired.”  
“Sleep earlier then. First year ain’t that bad.” 

\--------

First exam is biology, it’s two hours long and he’s running off of the lowest amount of sleep possible--Newt can bite him out later. Not now. 

What is the smallest living particle?  
Cells b) Atoms c) organ d) mitochondria 

On second thoughts, maybe Alby was right to bite him out over this. This… this is fine. Everyone can handle this. 

\-------

Getting two hours to write two essays is the most painful thing he’s ever done. Even if Newt was a seat away, writing under time limits were the worse. 

Looking over the questions, Thomas feels his brain going click click click wir. Could not compute. The clock in the room continues ticking. Two hours remain. 

Shuck essay writing. 

\-----------

Before he knows it, the exams are over. A weird fever dream if he could even call it one. At least all of them were free. Free from the clenches of the professors, now as long as they got a 70 on everything, everyone has passed just fine. 

\-------

“What the hell--” he cries as out as he watches Minho’s character back throw him off of the stage. Ending his last stock. Ness was unfair, he might have to change mains from this. 

In the next round, Thomas watches as Newt manages to KO everyone bombing everyone into oblivion. It’s great. All these rounds of Smash is the best time of the entire year. When no one has to face the next day with assurance that they’ve failed in a course. Even if one was sick. 

This was the one day of the year in which the students of the university, within this small friend group may pour out their frustrations by punching the living daylights out of each other with video games. Whether it be through unfair smash attacks or accidental jumps off the edge of the cliffs in the level, everyone was screaming as they cheer on the players. 

Thing is, Thomas hopes that next year he won’t be sick. Those essays had terrible grammar. At least life was good.


End file.
